


Something New

by JenCforCarolina



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 02:29:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11049420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/pseuds/JenCforCarolina
Summary: Ikora and Zavala worked with Andal for years, maybe decades, maybe centuries. They were affected by his death too.Also on Tubmlr here





	Something New

Ikora holds a twenty-five win streak in the Crucible. She carries the most legendary, most exotic, and hottest shotgun to be created to date. She built the walls this Tower presides over. She has seen the City through calamities, read every name lost as they rolled in from Mare Imbrium. She is the master of a sect of Guardians, inherited from her predecessor, trained in stealth and arcane arts. She has worked tirelessly to undo the mark of Osiris on this room, on this triumvirate.

She falters, when she strides down the steps, same ones she’s walked for hundreds of years, and there’s an Exo standing at the other side of the table, at _Andal’s_ side of the table. She felt him on her way over, she knows this. She _felt_ Cayde-6 (an oft visitor and occasionally welcome face) in the way Warlocks do. His Light is not Andal’s Light. She knows he took the Dare. She knows he’s here to work, she _knows_ he’s here to take the place of the lost. She still chokes imperceptibly on the bile that rises in her throat, the utter wrongness of a _different_ man in the place where _Andal_ ought to be and…

He looks like he wants to be here even less, and she’s learned to read Exo mood in all her centuries. She falters but it does not show, and she’s pursed her lips and hardened her brow and set her gaze on her place before he even notices her approach 

“Something happen I didn’t hear about?” He asks, he’s learned to read human too. Of course he has, Andal’s shadow. Ikora softens her edges to appear more outwardly neutral. Zavala will still see the sharpness. 

“If you’re concerned you can check the priority channel. Console is behind you.” She replies coolly, opens the top book of her stack, not the one she immediately needs but she begins to skim it mindlessly anyway, desperate to appear busy, be unbothered, take the first few minutes of this new age they’ve suddenly entered to think. 

“Alriiiight….” He drawls. Turns to the computers. “I don’t have access.” 

“Your Ghost got verification codes last night.” 

“Right. Thanks.” 

Ikora offers no response, not even a nod. Closes the book with a clatter –it’s a waste of time after all- and finds the one she really needed. Opens notes from the last week, since _before_ , and scrolled back up a page, finding her place once more. Cayde’s clacking away at the console, slow and deliberate, it’s not Andal’s smooth rhythm – he had this flair to typing his password, and all things, like it was pecked out to a tune. 

Zavala enters (she feels him from Shaxx’s relatively new corner) and strides along the wrong side of the table (hers). The left side, the Hunter’s side, is more direct for him and his stride. 

Besides, she has a tendency to stack books beside her and behind her, when she’s not using them. But today he passes her side of the table without breaking a stride, weaves his way between her and a box of recovered Vex Goblin eyes. She knows, somehow, it will be his route now. He won’t switch back to the other side for decades. 

He settles in his place and meets her eyes for a flicker of a second. She hasn’t seen pain like that there in a long time and it brings, back up the emotion she’s been forcing down. She turns back to her books and buries herself in work. 

Cayde tries to engage Zavala in a conversation, gets a few curt nods in response. She can just feel the Hunter’s discomfort, his bouncing Light. He is _unable_ to stay still, Darkness damned why did he even think he could manage here? 

“Cayde.” It takes her a moment to say his name and not _his_. “Try to be more calm, you’re bleeding solar.” 

He perked up at his name, towerfrost… she doesn’t know if she can do this. “Ah… alright, Ikora. Right. Yep I’ll…just calm down.” Zavala’s gaze on her is unreadable. 

She goes back to work, slipped into it, the trance of knowledge. Time passes and she finds herself glancing to the hall, casting out for a familiar Light. It happens at least four times before she realizes what she’s been doing and stops, catches herself. She looks back at the words on the pad in front of her and none of them make any sense anymore. She’s forgotten her place, what had she been reading, what had she been doing? 

A message on the screen, notification of a disturbance in one of the libraries in the Cryptarch’s wing. It normally wouldn’t need direct Vanguard presence but… 

Zavala coughs. She skims the message again, sees that it was forwarded from him. She closes the book beside her, slips the pad into a pocket in her robes. 

“Cryptarch emergency. I’ll be back.” She hopes the glance she gives Zavala conveys enough gratitude. 

“Ah, that sounds fun.” Cayde calls after her. “We’ll… just be here, waiting. Couple of blue guys.” 

Zavala’s voice is icy as he cuts in. “Never say that again.” 

Ikora promises herself she will someday return the favor. She takes the shortest route to the Cryptarch wing, and later, the longest route back. 


End file.
